"Faithful enough to keep classic Trek fans happy, but fresh enough to create legions of new ones."
I was lucky enough to get in to see an advance screening of Star Trek, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the film that unfolded in front of me.
WARNING: Some spoilers ahead, though I've tried to keep those to a minimum.
If every "reboot" was like Star Trek, then fans wouldn't be nearly so terrified each time a reboot was announced of their favorite properties. J.J. Abrams - a director I've never been overly impressed by - has managed to create a film that is high on action, has a consistent storyline, and recreates beloved characters in a way that is both fresh enough for new audiences, and faithful enough for long-time Star Trek fans.
At first I was skeptical of the idea behind the reboot. It made little sense to me for them to try to straddle the line of "Everything you knew about the old Star Trek is still true" yet still introduce elements of "But everything is new." I thought that if you wanted to do a reboot, then do a reboot. Divorce yourself from the previous television series and films, and start fresh. Or, make a prequel and marry yourself to the continuity. But trying to do both made little sense to me.
Somehow, however, Abrams makes it work. "Star Trek" opens with the new villain, Nero (played with just the right amount of menace by Eric Bana) arriving from the future. Nero's ship opens fire on the USS Kelvin, and in the process, the father of James Tiberius Kirk is slain, forever changing the history of the Star Trek universe. From the moment Nero arrives, we are now in a new world, a new universe, where everything we knew before still happened, but everything has the potential to be completely different.
The plot proceeds to show the early life of Kirk and Spock, their enrollment in Starfleet, and how they both end up onboard the Enterprise. Nero resurfaces twenty-five years after his attack on the Kelvin, and proceeds to get revenge for the destruction of Romulus - an action that still lies over a hundred years into the future for the characters of the film. Along the way, we also are introduced to the remainder of the classic Star Trek bridge crew, and while no one other than Spock, Kirk and Bones really get the opportunity to take center stage for long, each character gets several moments to shine - both in terms of their ability and in their personality. And Leonard Nimoy returns as an aged Ambassador Spock, who has traveled from the future.
The crew of the Enterprise is unable to stop Nero from all of his plans, and as a result, this new Star Trek crew begins their ongoing mission with a tragedy hanging high over their heads. However, ultimately, Nero is stopped, friendships are forged between the classic trinity of Star Trek, and James T. Kirk transforms from a brash, young man with a chip on his shoulder into a brash Starfleet Captain, who is able to channel his grief into productive action.
The plot isn't the most complex in the world, but it's consistent, and provides enough of a skeleton to hang the meat of the film on. And that meat is the characterizations. The casting for this film is, quite simply, brilliant. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Antony Yelchin, Zoe Seldana and Jon Cho all channel the characters created by the classic Trek cast, yet at the same time manage to bring something new to them. They don't impersonate their predecessors, but they echo them, which seemed to be the perfect approach for me.
Bana, for his part, creates a villain with enough legitimate motivation to be sympathetic, but with enough ruthlessness and cruelty to make the audience cheer when he is finally defeated. Comparisons between Captain Nero and Kahn Noonian Singh will crop up in many reviews, and while the comparison is slightly unfair to Bana and his villainous persona, it's very good company to keep, and he manages to stand nearly side-by-side with the most infamous of all Star Trek villains.
If the characters are the meat of the body of this film, and the plot is the skeleton, then the hair and skin are the action sequences and special effects. And we end up with a very attractive appearance in that regard. While I personally have grown tired of close in, shakey-camera work for action sequences, Abrams' still managed to keep me happy with the action of the movie - both on a person-to-person level (the battle between Kirk and Sulu and the two Romulans on top of Nero's planet-destroying machine is one I will happily watch again and again), and the space battles. Ship-to-ship combat in the Star Trek universe has often been unexciting visually. That all changes with this movie.
A final note about the film really must be about Abrams' awareness of who he was making this movie for - and the answer to that is "everyone." Small references to Star Trek-canon are peppered throughout the movie, both in terms of classic lines and in cameo appearances (including a final turn by Majel Barrett Rodenberry as the voice of the ship's computer). Yet at the same time, the "easter eggs" don't overwhelm the more casual filmgoer.
This is not the Star Trek you may remember. It isn't the original series. It isn't Next Generation, Enterprise, Deep Space Nine or Voyager. But it's a fresh take on the classic characters, and is well worth the time to see. I would happily see it again, and would be equally happy to hear that this crew was set to do another five movies and somewhere between three and seven seasons on television.
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